


i hope you need this now (cause i know i still do)

by slybrunette



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-24
Updated: 2008-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:58:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 5.09, more specifically Meredith/Cristina's blowout of sorts. There's a calendar in her head where she counts down the days since she last talked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i hope you need this now (cause i know i still do)

Five days before the phone rings Meredith kicks Derek out of bed over Sadie. He grumbles and grabs his pillow, shuffling off downstairs, or maybe even to whatever room doesn't happen to be occupied at the moment. Sadie bounds in, climbing under the covers and settling in almost immediately.

"This is so much better than the couch," Sadie tells her, and she just had surgery that went very, very wrong, so this is permissible and Derek will forgive her. But that's not what this is about. This is about absence and distraction from it.

Meredith still doesn't sleep.

\---

Four days before the phone rings she plays what amounts to third wheel at the bar. It's just Alex and Izzie and her, and Alex does this thing where if Izzie's quiet too long he'll look worried, so Izzie tries to overcompensate. Her voice remains an octave higher than it should be throughout every conversation and there are at least two inside jokes that fly over Meredith's head.

Eventually her eyes wander to watch Mark struggle with trying to keep his attention off of Lexie, and she watches that for the next ten minutes like it's a soap opera.

After that she watches the door.

\---

Three days before the phone rings she gets summoned by Dr. Wyatt right after lunch but before the surgery she was scheduled to assist on.

"I'm fine, really," Meredith defends, as soon as she sits down and before Dr. Wyatt can even start to say anything to the contrary. She doesn't want to talk about her feelings; she wants to ignore them until they either go away or resolve themselves. She wants to focus on the positive. "I don't need more therapy. I'm good."

The doctor considers this, for a moment, her pen held upright, mere millimeters from touching her lips. Then, "If you're fine then why do you feel the need to say it? Your lips tell one story, your eyes another. So which is it?"

It's code for ‘you're going to be here for awhile'. It's code for ‘I know you're hiding something'.

Meredith keeps looking at the clock and chewing her lips while Dr. Wyatt digs in all the wrong directions (the hint she'll never give: it's not a five letter word and it does not begin with a ‘D').

\---

Two days before the phone rings she forgets the running whipstitch. It's stupid but she can't visualize it, can't do it, and it's supposed to be like riding a bike you know, once you've figured it out you never forget, except she has.

She digs out a textbook and a banana during lunch and stays silent for the duration of it, focused and confused and maybe a little bit angry all at once.

\---

One day before the phone rings her and Derek have a huge blowup over Lexie, over how he seems to have designated himself her own personal savior and how, sometimes, she just can't deal with her.

"She's your family. You don't have much left," he reminds her, and it's meant to be helpful and encouraging but it just winds up sounding insensitive.

Venting to Sadie just isn't the same.

\---

The phone rings at midnight on the sixth day.

"I don't know how to do this," bluntly replaces ‘hello' and Meredith sighs something relieved into the phone. It could stand for so many things and somehow any of them works.

"I don't either," she admits, and tension lifts. "I didn't - "

Cristina cuts in with her own fragmented, "I didn't either."

It's ‘I'm sorry' and ‘I forgive you' in a handful of slightly less painful words.

Upstairs, Derek sleeps and Sadie's passed out on the couch in the other room. Alex and Izzie are still out at Joe's and she still remembers that damn stitch. And as she vents to Cristina about her and Derek's latest argument everything seems so much more bearable.


End file.
